Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness –Mark Twain

Monday, October 31, 2011

Nice dress!!

Friday, 10-28-11

A month or so ago Elmer, Cecilia’s son, who attends the boy’s school where I teach, told me that for one of their classes they were going to be making clothes out of recyclable goods. He told me that they were going to make dresses and that the guys were going to wear the dresses. When he first told me this I was really confused. I thought I’d misheard him. So I asked again. And yes indeed, the guys were going to be wearing dresses. They’d be making things out of chip bags, garbage bags, and other things.

Well, today was the day. There was going to be a fashion show at school. No one had told me (big surprise). So I ran home to get my camera in between classes and they were getting ready when I returned. I saw several guys sporting some nice-looking dresses and they posed for several pictures for me. They were wearing dresses, skirts, shirts, pants, and hats out of chip bags, tablecloths, garbage bags, drinking straws, paper, aluminum foil, and other things. They’d also made flower vases out of bottles and horns.

Getting ready

Beautiful!

A lovely group

Young model

I love these dresses!

Some vases made by the students

Lining up

The name of the school and grade

Soon the fashion show began. No one had class so everyone was able to watch. All the guys lined up in front of the stage so the whole school could see their outfits. They began by parading around the main part of the school to some 80’s music. After that a few boys walked around individually while someone talked about their outfits. Then a couple guys got up on the stage to do some sort of demonstration. I’m not exactly sure what it was. They were talking about farming techniques and using machetes and sticks. That’s something that would never be allowed in a school in the US. I think the demonstration had something to do with nature and recycling.

When they’d finished several more guys paraded around in their outfits while someone described what they were wearing. Several of the guys seemed like naturals processing around. Then all the guys in the homemade hats walked around for everyone. Many of the hats were very creative! I got some close up pictures later. After they’d finished walking around the fashion show was over and the guys all walked back to their classrooms.

Parading around

Here comes the first couple

Gorgeous

Love the dress

Waving to his fans

All the models

Strutting his stuff

Machete work

Planting seeds

Ta da!

What a ham

The flower in the hat completes the outfit

Here comes the boys with the hats

Looks good

Another parade

Skirt made of straws

Fork hat

Chip bag hat

Showing off his work

Other hats

But the fun wasn’t over yet. There was still some dancing. I’m not sure why but there always seems to be some sort of odd dancing and these kinds of events. And I mean this in the least offensive way: it’s always really bad dancing. The first was a group of three guys and three girls. The dancing they did resembled what you’d see at a high school dance. The next dance was what I believe were three guys trying to rap/break dance/something else. The dancing was finished off with six more students doing another round of high school dancing.

With that the show was completely over. As I walked around to get some pictures of the vases on stage I saw that one of my students had put a mop on his head and a guacal on top of that. I guess he was trying to get in on the fashion show too. Then another student put a mop on his head. I got a couple pictures of them since they weren’t able to participate in the show. Then it was off to teaching again. Oh, the good times I have at school.